After taking the lead last week, and securing itself a whole week of exclusivity in trading bitcoin futures, the Cboe options exchange, which was first to launch the contracts, now has stiff competition.

According to the Financial Times, $50m in bitcoin futures changed hands on CME exchange within the first three hours of trading. Their competitor Cboe had facilitated for $30m in bitcoin futures trading over the same time.

The CME group prices its bitcoin futures contracts on trading information from four bitcoin exchanges — GDAX, Bitstamp, Kraken, and itBit, whilst Cboe’s are gathered from the Gemini Exchange.

On the CME launch day, Bitcoin came close to the $20,000 landmark, with many indexes reaching $19,800 per BTC. Since then, Bitcoin bounced back after 4pc drop when it dipped as low as $17,925 across many exchanges, but has now recovered back to the $19,000 price mark.

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